Get the latest information about how the law is racing to catch up with technological change from staffers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the nation's premiere digital civil liberties group fighting for freedom and privacy in the computer age. This session will include updates on current EFF issues such as surveillance online and fighting efforts to use intellectual property claims to shut down free speech and halt innovation, discussion of our technology project to protect privacy and speech online, updates on cases and legislation affecting security research, and much more. Half the session will be given over to question-and-answer, so it's your chance to ask EFF questions about the law and technology issues that are important to you.
Kurt Opsahl is a Senior Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation focusing on civil liberties, free speech and privacy law. Opsahl has counseled numerous computer security researchers on their rights to conduct and discuss research. Before joining EFF, Opsahl worked at Perkins Coie, where he represented technology clients with respect to intellectual property, privacy, defamation, and other online liability matters, including working on Kelly v. Arribasoft, MGM v. Grokster and CoStar v. LoopNet. For his work responding to government subpoenas, Opsahl is proud to have been called a "rabid dog" by the Department of Justice. Prior to Perkins, Opsahl was a research fellow to Professor Pamela Samuelson at the U.C. Berkeley School of Information Management & Systems. Opsahl received his law degree from Boalt Hall, and undergraduate degree from U.C. Santa Cruz. Opsahl co-authored "Electronic Media and Privacy Law Handbook." In 2007, Opsahl was named as one of the "Attorneys of the Year" by California Lawyer magazine for his work on the O'Grady v. Superior Court appeal, which established the reporter's privilege for online journalists.
Kevin Bankston is a Senior Staff Attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a former Nonresidential Fellow at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, specializing in free speech and privacy law with a focus on government surveillance, Internet privacy, and location privacy. He regularly litigates issues surrounding location privacy and electronic surveillance, and is currently a lead counsel in EFF's lawsuits against the National Security Agency and AT&T challenging the legality of the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. From 2003-05, he was EFF's Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis Fellow, studying the impact of post-9/11 anti-terrorism surveillance initiatives on online privacy and free expression. Before joining EFF, he was the Justice William J. Brennan First Amendment Fellow for the American Civil Liberties Union, where he litigated Internet-related free speech cases. He received his J.D. in 2001 from the University of Southern California and his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas.
Marcia Hofmann is a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where she focuses on computer crime and security, electronic privacy, free expression, and other digital civil liberties issues. She is also a non-residential fellow at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society and a social media columnist for California Lawyer magazine. Prior to joining EFF, Marcia was staff counsel and director of the Open Government Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
Hanni Fakhoury is a Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation focusing on the intersection of technology and criminal law within the Coders Rights Project. Prior to joining EFF, Hanni worked as a federal public defender in San Diego. In less than four years, he tried fourteen felony jury and bench trials and argued before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals four times, winning three reversals, including a published reversal in U.S. v. Sandoval-Gonzalez. He also served as a copy editor for the 2010 edition of Defending a Federal Criminal Case. While in law school, Hanni worked at the federal public defender's office in Sacramento, where he obtained acquittals in one jury trial and two bench trials. Hanni is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where he received two degrees, including a honors degree in history, and Pacific McGeorge School of Law, where he was elected to the Order of Barristers for his excellence in written and oral advocacy. Hanni is a member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Peter Eckersley is a Staff Technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He keeps his eyes peeled for technologies that, by accident or design, pose a risk to computer users' freedoms and then looks for ways to fix them. He explains gadgets to lawyers, and lawyers to gadgets. Peter is currently putting the finishing touches to a PhD on digital copyright policy with the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia and the computer science department at the University of Melbourne. His doctoral research focused on the practicality and desirability of using "virtual market" public funding systems to legalize P2P file sharing and similar distribution tools while still paying authors and artists for their work.
Rebecca Reagan is the Intake Coordinator at EFF and is the first point of contact at EFF for many people. Prior to coming to EFF, Rebecca directed the federally-funded Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals, worked in employee benefits consulting and software project management, and was a participant in the Robert Bosch Foundation Fellowship Program, through which she worked for Karsten Voigt, the Coordinator of German-American Cooperation for the German Foreign Ministry.